Pearly, no offense meant, but this statement in the context of IBM's price action today is absurd:
It does not require any "manipulation". The poot writer intelligently reads the stock action. If it looks as if a few guys are buying it up, so what if he buys up a few stocks himself.
Again, the chart:
stockcharts.com[l,a]jaclyymy[pb50!b200!d20,2][vc60][iUb14!La12,26,9!Lg]
Let's see, with 5 minutes to go in the trading day (and the indices trending DOWN), someone "intelligently reads the stock action" and buys, what, 800K of IBM over 5 minutes, to drive the price to 90. The open interest on the IBM March 90's was 7926 per yahoo.
finance.yahoo.com
So the "intelligent reader of the tape" (probably a Beardstown Lady!) just spent 72 million dollars (likely of other people's money) to jam the tape a buck-thirty to prevent a loss marked to market today of about 1.30 x 792,600 = 1.030 million ClownBux. Of course, if they gap it down on Monday (which is now very likely, since they'll want to minimize their exposure to IBM and will be selling at the bell), it'll all be for naught...except no immediate M-T-M on the losses..
No, this sort of transaction only makes sense if 1) the buyers were trying to avoid the Mark to Market (which is clearly manipulation) 2) Were trying to jam IBM, to make the Dow look less ugly (clearly manipulation) 3) Decided at the end of the day that IBM was a "compelling value" at 3:55, and that they MUST own it immediately (yeah, right!) |
